


We Find Our Way Out

by epersonae, hops



Series: the only life you could save [23]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Cooking with feelings, Gen, Post-Canon, Ships referenced but not enough to tag, difficult conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 19:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17566799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hops/pseuds/hops
Summary: Taako and Lup have never quite talked about what happened. But they probably should. (A follow-up to the events of The Reckoning Arrives.)





	We Find Our Way Out

**Author's Note:**

> This is unlikely to make any dang sense without the rest of the series, in particular The Reckoning Arrives, but honestly: go read all of it!

The house is quiet when Lup slides out of Barry’s arms. Normally she savors a quiet moment to snuggle her guy, maybe drift with him into sleep, but she’d emerged restless out of her meditation to thoughts of Kalen’s fortress, staring at the ceiling, thinking of what little she’d seen of the place, trying to guess what kind of place her brother had been held. Time to get up, then.

Her feet take her to the kitchen without any particular intention, but obviously her restless hands want something to do. If the house were empty, maybe she’d slam open the cabinets, but she doesn’t want to wake anyone. Everything seems not quite right— maybe literally everything, but right now, in particular, she can’t make up her mind, and that seems like the most shitty part. Her hands clench and unclench, and that finally decides it, the need to do something with her hands.

She takes out the biggest bowl, flour, sugar, salt. A bread, something she can just dig into with her hands for a few minutes. A sweet bread? An eggy one? She shakes her head. First loaf plain, maybe; she checks the ceramic jar of sourdough starter, and yes, there’s enough.

Movement is soothing, action is soothing, combining simple ingredients and punishing them to within an inch of their lives is soothing. Everything’s spread out across the countertops (including all the things she decided not to make) and there’s flour in her hair and a streak of dough on her shirt, and that’s just fine.

She’s almost ready to put the satin-smooth ball of dough back into the bowl to rest when she hears the first stirrings from upstairs. She pauses, ears twisting and perking to catch the sound of footsteps, a door being opened and closed. Same pace and weight of steps she’s known her whole life…. She gives the dough an extra turn under the heel of her hand; everything’s familiar, nothing’s familiar. 

Soon after, Taako comes down the stairs, disheveled in his pajamas but already with his glamour on for the day. They’ve all seen him without it, but he still just feels better with it on, especially after… 

He tries not to think of the new scars on his back and side; he’d thought he was done with all the adventurous injury bullshit by now, but evidently not. Even so, they’re just scars now, and nobody had brought up Kalen yet, to boot.

And Lup’s in the kitchen making bread before breakfast— never a good sign— and Taako can guess what she’s heated about, but he’s not gonna get into  _ that,  _ because he just woke up, and he wanted to make a frittata, the one with prosciutto and gruyere and spiralized potatoes that Barry likes, mostly because he could spiralize the potatoes by hand and that takes for-fucking-ever, but also needs a lot of focus as to not cut his own thumb off. He has Magnus to thank for that kind of carving skill, he thinks, recalling the technique Magnus had patiently taught him in those later years when they had cooked together in the tight quarters of the galley. Magnus hadn’t always been the most help, but Taako could never kick him out of the kitchen. Taako was glad to have seen him after getting home from Hurn, and Lucretia had to see Magnus too, of course, but it wasn’t enough time. It never is. 

Taako frowns as he approaches the counter, where Lup’s laying the towel over the bowl. 

“Jeezy, made a fuckin’ mess of the place before I could even get in to make breakfast? Out, I gotta get on my bullshit.” Taako waves both hands in a shoo-ing motion, though she can’t see him. 

“Not my fault you were sleeping in,” she says, wiping her hands on her sleep pants as she turns. 

“I get a free pass after getting shanked.” 

Lup grits her teeth, startled by a jolt of adrenaline that has her ready to fling things or shout. Hearing Barry’s voice in her head, she takes a deep breath instead, counting down from five as she exhales. She starts tidying the counter so she’s not looking at him when she says, “Might get shanked less often if you let some of us help.” 

Taako cringes. Yup, that’s how it’s gonna be. “Had lots of help, obvi. Sometimes things just break bad, but, hey. Dude’s dead as a doorknob so…mission accomplished?” 

Another long, slow, steady breath. The raisins she didn’t use back in the cupboard, the lid snapped onto the jar of sugar, salt cellar back in its place. 

“Taako—” But she doesn’t even know what she wants to say next. Too many things, and she’s worried if she hits the wrong one he’ll just walk out, and who knows when the next time will be? Instead she just sighs, then finally, “It’s not about that. He’s dead, sure, and that’s real cool, but,  _ Taako.”  _

He knows what she’s getting at, and despite his intent— his multiple conversations with Lucretia, his desperate anxiety in Kalen’s dungeon wishing for one more chance to just make things right with his sister— he can’t get a word out. He just woke up, he just got home, he just can’t focus on this right now. He’s got every excuse in the book, and he’s just about ready to pry it open. 

But instead of an excuse, or even a joke, he just says, “What?” 

Her deliberately steady breathing is interrupted with a hitch that might be anger and might be tears, and she’s not entirely sure which it’s going to be when she opens her mouth. “You can’t fucking play dumb with me.” Anger, then; she really didn’t want to do that, but it is what it is. “Doesn’t matter if it all worked out in the end…” She thinks of sitting with Lucretia in the guest room, the two of them crying as he slept. “...right? Like, you’re the last one who….” She lets out an exasperated sigh, and when she puts the sugar back in its place she doesn’t bother to be gentle when she closes the cupboard door. 

His heart leaps into his throat at the cupboard slamming shut. “Who what?” he asks, not trying to play dumb, but at a loss for anything else to say. Things had been tense in the house, and he knows she’s been upset the whole time since, but no other thought comes. He doesn’t have an excuse besides  _ I didn’t want you to worry,  _ and he already knows she won’t accept that. 

“You’re the last person who should be hiding their fucking plans, lying to the people who love you, pretending like….” She’s counting things off on her fingers, and then her voice cracks, and she swallows hard, her face twisted into a frown. “You didn’t trust me.” She leaves the  _ why? _ unsaid, at least for now. 

Taako can’t help the laugh that bubbles up with a sharp edge of anger at her accusation. “ _ Oh _ ,” he says with a bit of theatrics, because maybe he’s earned it. “ _ You,  _ Lup,  _ you’re  _ gonna talk to  _ me  _ about hiding plans and lying and fucking off without me? Yeah, alright. I’m going back to bed.” He jabs, his hands gripping the edge of the counter tight before he pushes himself away, seething. He’d fucked up, sure, but not how she had. 

She grabs his wrist before he can go. “That’s exactly what I mean, dumbass.” She can feel the pulse in his wrist, a fast nervous beat. “I fucked up so bad, and you’ve never said a damn thing, but I’m not stupid, and then Creesh on top of that, and, fuck. So  _ obviously  _ you know better than that but you don’t, you didn’t tell me, and so what exactly does that mean?” There’s hot tears at the corner of her eyes— it feels like too much, too hard, too soon, but also too late now. 

His throat is tight, still mad, still with her hand wrapped around his wrist so hard it almost hurts. He withdraws a little and she eases her grip but won’t yet let go. “It doesn’t  _ mean  _ anything. It’s not that deep. I didn’t think it was gonna be a  _ whole thing _ so why get everyone worked up for nothing?” 

Even though he’s not looking, he feels her eyes burning into him. He’s at a loss for anything else to say, and all he really wants to do is make his damn frittata or go back upstairs. Too early for this. 

“Are you fucking with me right now? ‘Oh yeah, just gonna go take care of a super secret revenge mission—”

“Why do you get to fuck up and not me?” he snaps.

When she closes her eyes, she sees the black velvet walls closing in again. She can’t feel, she can hardly breathe, she hears a voice that’s her brother’s but strange and careless. She shudders and finally releases his hand. 

“Both of us don’t need to suffer that much,” she says softly. Then, in a tone she forces to be something close to normal, “Eggs are right there, you don’t have to go back to bed if you want to make something. I can wipe down the counter, just get it cleaned up, if you want a hand….” Her unfocused eyes stare at the towel over the bowl of dough, then she looks up, at the ceiling, at the floor above them. “I just want you to let me in, like—” Like he does with Kravitz. Like he used to do with her.

His anger subsides and the same old discomfort and guilt crop back up in its place. He doesn’t say anything when he walks to the cupboard and takes out his cast iron pan and a clean bowl. He simply sets down the bowl beside the eggs and leaves the space open for her to get to work beside him. When she doesn’t move, he simply says. “Frittata. Barry’s.” 

She nods, moving without a word to get the prosciutto and gruyere out of the fridge, setting them on the counter, then potatoes out of the bin. She should be glad he’s staying, glad he’s cooking: she’s not. Dissatisfaction simmers under her skin, even as she gets out the cheese grater and a bowl. “You’re going to do the potatoes?” 

“Yup.” 

He pulls out a knife, and there are so many easier ways, so many tricks to peel them, but he just presses it to the skin and starts peeling it in one long curl while Lup cracks eggs. When the peel is off, he sets the potato down and picks up the next. The silence is almost worse than arguing as he listens to the slight unevenness of her breathing. 

“You’re already  _ in,”  _ Taako says finally, breaking the silence. “Krav was just there.” And he’s lying, and maybe he shouldn’t, but it’s better to keep the peace, because this conversation isn’t a  _ conversation  _ as much as it is Lup probably just blowing off steam. 

He lets out a little huff, wishing that were the case. He almost slips the knife off the potato towards his thumb, but catches it in time. 

She winces at the sight of it. “Yeah, sure.” She drops the last of the eggshells into the bin on the counter. “Koko, just don’t bullshit me, okay?”

“Look, I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t—” He sets the potato and knife down, frustration burning on his tongue. “It’s not—”

“It is, though, and we’ve been pretending it’s not, and fuck that.” She turns to get the milk. 

She’s right, and he knows she’s right, and he wishes she wasn’t. He just doesn’t know what to say, still, after all that at the fortress where he would have given anything for a shot at making things right again. But instead of picking up where she leaves off, he quietly asks, “Can you pass me a—” 

Lup is already handing him a cutting board before he finishes the sentence, but she’s anticipated the wrong thing. He needs a bowl.

He takes the cutting board and sets it down, his hands too tight, his vision blurring slightly. He swallows. Yeah, it’s not alright, and he knows it, and he misses when it was, but it can’t be what is was, and he doesn’t know what else it could be.

She sees him falter, and looks at the cutting board, his white knuckles, the peeled potatoes, and a minute too late realizes what he was about to ask for.  _ This is what I mean,  _ is what she wants to yell; yell and throw things and make him talk, dammit, like that’s ever worked. Instead, “Dough’s rising in the big bowl, next size down okay?” When he doesn’t respond right away, she says his name with a faintly questioning tone.

He blinks away tears, angry that they’d sprung up in the first place. “Why didn’t you tell me before you left?” 

“Oh, ‘Ko,” and she pauses in her movement towards the stack of bowls, really looking at him. And then she casts True Seeing and  _ really _ looks at him, the little changes that she knows he hates, and the weariness around his eyes, the face she knows and doesn’t know, and they’ve never talked about  _ that _ either. “The Gauntlet was my fuck-up. And I thought I could—” Her mouth twists into a sad smile. “ _ Sometimes things just break bad,  _ right?” She rubs her face, the same gesture they both have, and she looks at him and sees everything that’s happened since then written across his face. “I’m so sorry.” 

“‘S whatever,” he says, already too defeated to say anything else about it. At least now he can remember those days, even if he can’t have them back. 

“It’s  _ not _ whatever,” she says. She opens and closes her mouth several times before settling on, “You’ve been mad at Cretia for years, and I’ve just been waiting for— I don’t even know, something, because I— I fucked up, and obviously you’re upset, and everybody knows you’ve got a chip on your shoulder with her but I just get ‘oh it’s all cool now’ and it’s not cool, and I don’t know how it’s going to be cool, and you can do like you do with her and either tell me to fuck off or actually accept a goddamn apology, but it’s not— it’s not  _ whatever—”  _ She can hear her voice rising, and with her luck this morning probably Barry and Kravitz heard all that, but she hates so much the way he slips away that she can’t stop herself until her own hands are clenched and she’s breathing hard. 

Taako’s flabbergasted, reeling over the accusations she just dumped at his feet. “This— this has nothing to do with Lucretia—” he says, a rush of emotion coming over him. “Everyone wants me to get right with her but once I try then it’s something else. Whatever. Whatever! I don’t—”  _ Don’t what? Don’t care?  _ “Apology accepted.”

“That’s not—” She remembers crying into Barry’s shoulder, his hand on her back.  _ Breathe.  _ He always tells her to breathe, and so while Taako goes to get the bowl for himself, she tries to steady herself, to breathe, to think. Talk to him gently, Lucretia had said. Real smooth, real gentle, she thinks. “She, uh, she said, Taako, it’s not going to, you can tell me….” She remembers leaving a note on the counter; remembers watching him reform on the deck after being dead for half a year; remembers the look of terror on his face at the end of her best day ever. “I promise there’s nothing I won’t tell you, not anymore, and you can, it’s okay, I promise….” When she finally blinks, there are tears on her eyelashes. Her voice is pleading. “Just tell me? Please?”

It’s barely out of her mouth before he blurts out, “You’re happy now!” and then a self-pitying smile despite his trembling lip. “Except for this. So why— why—” and he takes a big, shaky breath. 

“You’re still my heart, how can I be happy if you’re hurting?” She grabs his hands, looking into his eyes, taking in all the subtle changes in his face.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you feel bad for me. I’m not an idiot.” He looks at the half-spiralized potato, the bowl full of eggs yet to be scrambled. He doesn’t even want to finish cooking, he just wants to give up and fuck off to Raven’s Roost again or the school or even the moon. 

“You were never an idiot,” she says, and she means it, the same way she’d heard Lucretia’s voice for the first time in a decade saying  _ don’t sell yourself short,  _ while she herself was still trapped in that damned umbrella.

He just shakes his head, hands still in hers as he glances away. “You didn’t see before, I was—” he stops abruptly and steels himself to the memories that come. He’s still kind of mad and kind of a mess, the kitchen looking the same. Even Lup’s hands feel wrong. “This isn’t how I wanted to do this,” he says finally, softer than he wants it to be. 

“Yeah, me neither.” She looks around the kitchen with its pair of half-finished, half-cleaned-up projects and groans. “Fuck, what a mess. Kitchen’s a wreck, too.” She tries to catch Taako’s eye. “We could start a third project and make some cocoa?” 

He smiles a little, relieved, and nods. He takes two mugs from the cupboard while she digs out two packets of the pre-made stuff. Usually he’d give her shit for it, but not oday. He leans against the counter as she pours milk into a saucepan and heats it rapidly with flame from her hand instead of the stovetop, how she used to back on the Starblaster when they were too impatient to wait when they needed something warm and familiar. 

Taako kind of wants to say something. But he kind of doesn’t want to at all. Lup knows he’s hurting and it’s upsetting her, and she’s pissed that he left, natch. He could have guessed all that. And he knows that they’re going to have to talk about it sometime; maybe it  _ should  _ be today. Maybe he should listen to Lucretia and stop putting it off. 

But that’s a whole other thing. Lup’s… Lup’s upset that he’s gotten into it with Lucretia and not her? He empties the packets of chocolate mix into the mugs, lips pursed. 

She holds out the steaming saucepan. “I think we’re up.” 

He grabs a ladle with a mage hand and fills each halfway, then stirs. He can feel Lup looking at him and it’s almost worse than talking. He finishes pouring and drops the ladle in the sink, takes whipped cream from the fridge, and tops them. When he takes the can from the mage hand and dispels it, he turns to his sister and sprays a bit at her, a few flecks of whipped cream getting on her face. She laughs in surprise as he sets it back on the counter. 

He hands her the mug and pauses. “Want to sit on the porch?” he asks. 

She lets out a sigh of relief. If  _ anything _ that she thinks she knows about him is still true, that’s a step in the right direction. It’s as clear an invitation to talk as she could possibly hope for. She wipes the whipped cream from her nose with the back of her hand, although there’s still flour there, so it’s probably worse rather than better. 

“Totes.” 

They head out the back door together, Earl Grey weaving between their legs and darting out into the yard. She doesn’t feel quite calm enough to settle into the big bench or the rocking chairs, so she leans against the railing, taking a deep breath of the summer air. 

Taako sits on the step, not far from her but enough distance that she can’t quite see him, won’t have to meet his eyes when he talks. He cups the mug in his hands and takes a deep breath. “So you talked to Luce,” he starts, uncomfortable, more statement than question. 

“Not much, but yeah. I just came to see how you were doing, and she was singing you a damn lullaby, and I asked her what happened. You get that I’m mad at her, too, right? At least about  _ that?  _ I mean, woulda been nice to have been in on that sweet revenge from the get-go. Maggie’s my friend too.” She takes a sip, backs off of that thought. “Anyway. She kinda stumbled through something you must’ve said— I just— She seemed to think you— You thought I wouldn’t  _ understand?”  _ And like he’d said himself, because she was happy? It’s like a puzzle that makes less and less sense the more she fights with it, so instead she drinks her cocoa and stares off into nothing.

His jaw tenses.  _ She said that?  _ he wants to ask, but of course she did. Overstepping without asking, as Lucretia does. He closes his eyes for a moment and lets out a long sigh, tucking that anger away for later. 

“It’s not— That’s not what it’s about. It’s just like, things are cool now, we’re living large, fuckin’ finally, so why get caught up in the fine print? It’ll settle out whenever.” He shrugs, takes a sip of cocoa. “You’re back in action, can’t ask for much else, all things considered.” 

She hums thoughtfully. “I mean, this is a pretty dope life, you’re right about that. Could be more dope, though, without all this….” She waves her mug: the hidden resentments, the buried feelings, the actual lying, the past still open no matter what he says. “Imagine, less drama.” 

He snorts. “Have you met us?” 

“Yeah, doofus, and maybe you wouldn’t’ve had to—” She sees Taako in the guest bed at Merle’s, Lucretia’s stricken face at dinner. “You don’t have to make it harder on yourself.” 

He sighs. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have. I just… It was dumb. I wanted to do it myself, and I thought it’d be easy. Well, easier than it turned out.” His cheeks burn red. “I don’t… I have my stuff, I’m not blind to it, I just have to figure it out. Things are different now.”  

“Yeah. Might be a rad sitch now, but it was rough getting here, and we all fucked up plenty. I shouldn’t’ve shut you out, run off like that, maybe if I’d stuck it out or said something, maybe if I’d been there you wouldn’t have this much ‘stuff’....” She frowns into the cocoa. “I know it’s not fair for me to get all pissy about you not telling me. I just miss  _ knowing _ , you know?” 

Taako frowns, staring out into the yard. “There’s some shit you’re better off not knowing. Like, after my mems went through the paper shredder? You wouldn’t have dug it.”  

She glances at him; she's spent all this time guessing about those years, trying to see it in him, and she's never quite known. “Try me.”

Sazed comes to mind first, and all the things he tries not to think about come soon after. He opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He treated his assistant like shit when he’d wanted to get in on the action those years, and yeah, Sazed was the one who poisoned those people, but Taako’s ego had driven him to it. And then what, he ran? All those people hunched over, collapsing, crying out and vomiting blood, and he’d turned tail and took the stagecoach as far as it could go. And then, after Sazed left, he was alone. 

He still asks himself often how different it might have been had Lup been there like she should have been. But it doesn’t matter now, not really; it just matters that she wasn’t there, and that’s what he did without her. 

“I fucked up?” he says instead, voice cracking. In a rare moment of bravery, he takes a swing at getting something coherent out about it.  “People died. And you know that already, but the way I handled it… without you?” 

She remembers the very few times he died and she lived, back during their long century of running: how broken she was without him, stupid and angry, and she’d known he was coming back. She could only imagine what sort of disasters would have followed her if she’d been in his place, without even the memory of him to keep her steady, almost certainly worse than anything he could have done.

“Dammit Luce,” she mutters quiet enough so she hopes he doesn’t hear, then at normal volume, “Okay, and?” 

“It was the kind of spineless shit you hate. Didn’t really care who I hurt, didn’t have you around to keep me honest, so…” He sips instead of finishing his sentence, the cocoa starting to grow lukewarm. 

“You did some shit you’re not proud of. Happens. You’re still my brother, though. What did you think I was gonna do? Tell you to leave?” 

“Nah, I think you’re stuck with me. But I thought,” and he thinks to himself that he still thinks it now, “that you’d hate me for it? Not hate, I guess, just— just—“ 

It was so much easier to say it to Kravitz, even to Lucretia. He feels stupid saying it now with her eyes on him, waiting patiently, sympathetic in a way he doesn’t deserve. 

Taako sets his mug down. “I’m not  _ like  _ you,” he says, at a loss for anything else. 

“Hmm.” Half a dozen quips flit across her mind. Any one of them would put them both on more familiar ground, away from this awful raw feeling. She asked, and yet she hates seeing this side of him. A quip, or even just pushing back, and he'll go back to how he's been. She  _ says _ she doesn't want that. She feels Barry telling her to breathe, Lucretia telling her to be gentle. “How'd you mean?’

“Stuff’s different now.  _ We’re  _ different now. And it feels bad,” he says plainly. “And I think that one’s on me.” 

Two impulses:  _ damn skippy it is  _ on the one hand, and  _ what did  _ I  _ do to let this happen  _ on the other. (With a side helping of  _ oh Creesh could you have not _ if she’s being honest.)

“What would feel better?”

A thousand thoughts cross his mind at once, a thousand things just out of reach, things that could be if things had just been… different. There’s that small folded piece of his heart that still holds onto what he would have had with his mind intact. Having his sister back a decade-and-a-half ago would feel better. Half of him never missing would feel better. And he can’t have that. 

He just shrugs. He’s not sure when he started crying, but now he sniffles and shakes his head. 

“Mind if I…?” she gestures to the spot next to him on the stair. He scoots over a little to let her down. She leans against him, puts an arm around his shoulders; she doesn’t know for sure if that’s even the right thing, but touching him — touching anything— it grounds her, calms her. “You don’t have to tell me now, okay? But maybe….”

It hits him all at once, her arm around him, the smell of her hair, the slight grainy dusting of flour on her shirt. How long it was missing, how much that time took from them. A few more tears slip. 

“You left,” he says, then he stops, because that’s it. What else is there? 

“Yeah.” She left, and then everything went bad, and that’s all there is to it. (There’s so much more: circles of black glass, cities of candy, drowned islands, a year of nightmares and despair.) 

Then the shame of it feels like smoke clawing up from his lungs. “I forgot.” 

And that’s worse, even, worse than leaving, because at least when she left, she could still miss him. He walked around as someone else for ten years, missing his better sense, missing half his heart. And that’s who he is without her. And who he is now isn’t who he was supposed to be. 

“I know.” Lucretia in her bubble, Taako threatening to kill her: things Lup couldn’t have imagined, never would’ve believed. The loss that weaves through all of them, one way or another, a shadow on every bright-lit day since. “Sucks.” 

“I don’t want it to be different anymore.” He feels childish as he says it, but it’s true. “I just want— I’m sorry.” And then it all catches up with him. Things with Lucretia changed so quickly— they had to, there was no choice— that he’d managed to lose sight of his usual grievances that used to occupy his mind. Her choice took Lup’s memory from him, but he still felt ashamed for being able to forget her at all. 

Her eyes well up with tears. “Me too,” she says. All she’s wanted, for years now, is to just get back to how they all used to be. Everything, all of this, is missing what was and pretending like it could possibly be that again. She lets out a long sigh. “We’ve got a sweet pad now, at least?”

Taako lets out a watery laugh. “Yeah. A roof is pretty chill.  _ And  _ it’s on the ground?” 

“Sometimes….” She tucks her head in close, and then she laughs too. “Sometimes I miss everybody piled on top of each other? Just, like….”

“Yeah? Who do you miss piling on top of?” Taako laughs again, waggling his eyebrows knowingly. He grins and wipes his face with the back of his hand as she makes a noise of disgust and rolls her eyes. 

“Ew, what? No, that’s not….” She thinks of dinner at Merle’s, so many at the table, and the ache of Taako and Magnus not there. “You know what I mean, dingus. Just, everybody around and not having to fuckin’, share a Fantasy Google Calendar to have dinner.” 

For the first time in a long time, when Lup says everybody, Taako thinks of  _ everybody _ . It had been strange and not strange at all when he’d woken up at Merle’s with Lucretia at his bedside. For a moment it’d felt like nothing had changed at all, that twenty years had been redacted, reset in an instant. His best friend, same as always. Thinking about it too long feels like prodding a bruise. 

“I mean yeah, it was pretty dope.” He laughs uneasily. “But also I like having my own bathroom? Because seven people? And like, Merle counts as like, three, really.” 

“Ooof. Okay, good point.” Joking around again feels good, feels normal, as normal as they ever get, but she’s not quite ready to let go of the moment. “So at some point you’re gonna tell me all about everything that happened out there, before me and your boy rolled up to save your ass, yeah?”

“The part where I got captured and possibly stabbed or the part where I killed him and it was super rad?”

She looks out across the peaceful yard, where the grey cat is leaping at a bug and failing to catch it, then cranes her head to look at Taako as best she can without moving.

“I’ll let you start with the rad bit, just because I know you want to.”

Taako sticks his tongue out, the last of his tears gone. Earl gives up on his bug and comes to hop into Taako’s lap, purring. 

“I hope you were nice to Kenneth,” he says instead, petting the cat. “His cameo is a pretty dece part of the story.”

“Seems like a good kid,” she says. “You— you and Cretia seem to have a real knack for collecting them. I approve.” 

“I collect them, she  _ steals  _ them. The only reason why she hasn’t hired Joaquin is because he’s on a different plane of existence.” 

“Mhmmm. Of course.” 

“She’s—” Taako starts without thinking, then stops. She’s  _ what?  _ For everything that just happened, he still can’t keep the jumble of feelings inside him straight. He lets the word die in the air and hopes Lup will just change the subject.

“She’s?” Lup wants desperately to know and hopes that doesn’t come through in her body language.

Taako sighs. It’s been days and his head still feels a little empty without a constant connection with the band of telepathic thought. He hasn’t spoken to Lucretia since he left Merle’s. 

“Go easy on her, ‘kay?” Taako picks up his mug, avoiding Lup’s eyes. 

Lup sits up straight again, blinking at Taako, and startling the cat, who leaps away. “Ooookay... _ you _ want  _ me  _ to go easy on....” The last time Taako told Lup to go easy on Lucretia…. Honestly, she doesn’t even know when that would be. “You wanna tell me what that’s about?” 

“You’re pissed at her too, I heard enough at Merle’s to know that. But she…” He trails off and fills the silence with a long sip. “We… did what we had to. So just blame me.” 

“Well that’s not gonna happen, but okay.”

“No like— I— we were—” Taako stammers before he clamps his mouth shut and grips the mug tightly with both hands. 

“No go ahead, you can tell me. No yelling at you or Lucy, promise.” She doesn’t take her eyes off of him.

“I thought it was gonna be easy, like we were gonna kill the chump and be back for lunch, but obviously…” Taako sighs and shakes his head, sitting in the silence that they let sit between them. “I don’t know what they told you. We got— me and Luce, I mean, wound up in the damn dungeon and had to play _ fantasy 20 Questions _ . I don’t know.”

“With Zone of Truth, I heard that much. Lucretia seemed pretty shook.” When she looks at him, he’s staring at something far away, eyes hollow. He just nods. “Ango, yeah?” she adds, not including that there’s another she’d like to give a piece of her mind; no use getting him upset about that too. 

“Not just Ango.” When he tries to say anything else, nothing comes out. 

“Oh jeez, that fucker, wish I could go back and kill him myself, melt down that fortress again or some shit.” She flicks her fingers and a tiny flame blooms in her hand. “Who the fuck else he threaten?”

“Lulu,” he says quietly, putting a hand on her forearm to quell her temper for a moment. When her arm relaxes, he pulls back into himself. “I didn’t think I was coming home. And I didn’t think we were gonna get a chance to…” 

“Oh.” She takes a slow breath, the idea of it sinking in. “Oh. Oh, Taako. Oh fuck.” She wipes her face with her hands. “You know I’d fight RQ herself if I had to, right?” 

Taako’s valiantly fighting tears as he laughs weakly. It’s like he’s still in Kravitz’s arms, every nerve on fire, convinced that he’s dead and on his way to see the Lady herself anyway. “That’s not how it goes.” 

“Who’s the reaper here?” She lets out a sigh. His lip trembles as she continues. “I guess at least you—”

“I want to talk about it, Lup,” he says abruptly. “I— I don’t know. Too much bullshitting, and I could have— sorry—” His laugh breaks nervously as he taps his nails on his mug, jiggles his leg, wishes he could rewind the entire conversation. 

“So talk about it,” she says, a little impatient but not unkindly. 

He laughs again and it pitches up even more than the last time. “I don’t know where to—  _ how  _ to—” He shakes his head and finally looks at her, the same and different all at once. “But I want to?” 

She looks down into her empty mug, then back at him. “Well, you were going to start with the rad part first, yeah? So I dunno, just start with that and….” She shrugs. “We’ll see how it goes?” 

There’s so much at once that he wants to say, but he just pulls his legs up and rests his chin on his knees, following grains in the planks on the stairs below to keep his feelings from flying out of his grasp. Of course he wants to talk about Kalen, and what happened, and he’ll tell her soon, but he wants to talk about them. About how she left, about their time apart, about being different now, each other and everything. And he left too. And he was almost too late. 

She wants to talk about Kalen and his mind’s only half there. His mind only feels half  _ anywhere  _ since he got home. And right now he’s so tired he can barely think. 

She looks at his hollow eyes, the way he’s curled on himself again, and she puts her arm around him. “Maybe after breakfast, huh? We’ve got time, whenever….” He’s back, and he  _ wants  _ to talk, and they have time, maybe not the infinity they once had, but enough. 

He leans into her and sniffs, wiping tears against her shirt and feeling the leftover flour stick to his cheek. “I love you, Lup,” he says hoarsely. 

“Love you too.” She feels the rise and fall of his breathing against her. “You’re always going to be my heart, Taako. Always.” 

He rests there for a moment, both of them looking out at the yard, his ear pressed close enough to hear the mild, distant thud of her heartbeat, a miracle in itself. 

“We should probably go clean up before Kravitz comes down and sends us to the Stockade for kitchen crime,” Taako says. 

“Or before he tries to finish making that frittata and we have to send  _ him  _ to the Stockade.” She slowly pushes herself to standing, holds out her hand. When he takes it, she pulls him up and wipes some of the flour off his sticky cheek. 

“True, I didn’t spiralize those potatoes for nothing.” 

There’s the small awkward sound of a throat being cleared from the doorway.

“Ah, yeah, babe?” It’s Barry, not quite looking at either of them. “Not, you know, to intrude or nothing, but are we...doing something with that food in there?” 

“ _ We  _ are,” Taako says defensively, pointing to himself and Lup. “You chucklefucks better not have—” 

She puts a hand on Taako’s shoulder. “We’re good, breakfast’s coming soon, tell Skeletor not to worry.”

He nods, once, after catching her eye, and heads back inside.

“ _ Are _ we good?” she asks. 

He pauses, takes a breath, glances out at the yard one more time. “Better,” he says, looking at the door, then at her. For a second, they clasp hands in silent mutual reassurance, before going inside to their family.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented on The Reckoning Arrives; you were correct that the twins need to talk, and this is their beginning. There’s more coming, too! We’re definitely not done with these characters and this story.
> 
> Title from [“Would You Rather” by Phoebe Bridgers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ToSPYgkwmw)
> 
> Two recipes were @hops’s inspiration for “Barry’s frittata”: [Potato Frittata with Proscuitto and Gruyere](https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/potato-frittata-with-prosciutto-and-gruyere) and [Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Frittata with Spiralized Potatoes](https://inspiralized.com/bacon-egg-and-cheese-frittata-with-spiralized-potatoes/). @epersonae wants y’all to enjoy this [video about sourdough bread](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FVfJTGpXnU); 6 minutes in is a great demo of a dude kneading the dough.
> 
> (you can find us on tumblr as epersonae and tarkesians, come yell at us there, too!)


End file.
